Author: virginiaolson

Last weekend I attended The Team’s February Seminar at the Kellogg Arena in Battle Creek, Michigan, which featured Chris Brady as the keynote speaker. Team is the group that launched The Life Business in November 2011 which includes prominent leadership gurus such as Orrin Woodward. The business of Life revolves primarily around self-improvement, networking, life coaching, and community building: becoming job-optional and manifesting the life of your dreams.

Chris Brady’s keynote challenged audience members to ask themselves: “What difference have you been called to make?” As well as, “How do you define the business you are in?” He encouraged his listeners to not play small, but rather to “get busy about things that matter in the big picture.” He also made a point similar to one I’ve discussed in an earlier post, to focus not on WHAT you do, but on WHY you do it. In other words, it’s the motivation and intention behind actions that’s as important, or even more important, than the actions themselves.

Furthermore, Brady argues that one’s “true self” is what emerges under pressure, and that we must engage in the process of developing character and substance. This is a concept that resonates strongly with me, and one that was also discussed in one of my earlier posts. One of the key concepts in The Life Business is the idea of developing leadership ability. This relates to the concept of building community: a strong community requires real leaders, people of substance and character. People who have risen to the challenges of their life situations and transcended them by moving beyond their own limiting beliefs and habits.

One of the things that struck me about the seminar was the number of people in attendance (I estimate as many as 2000) who really seemed excited and inspired by the ideas that Brady and the other founders of Life are talking about. Concepts like:

One person can make a difference.

Freedom produces prosperity.

Your focus determines your reality.

Now, Life is a network marketing business (also commonly known as a “pyramid scheme”). That said, an important aspect of what Team is doing involves bringing true and empowering concepts into people’s lives in a concrete way. Inspiring them to make positive changes not only to their own lives but to their communities. So many people, everywhere I turn right now, are without hope and without help. They’re depressed and discouraged about their lives. They are, in a word, dis-empowered. So the ideas which are the foundation of Team and the Life business offer a new direction and constitute a significant contribution.

It’s interesting to me that so many people I’ve talked to seem to have a negative view of network marketing businesses, especially when these businesses seem to revolve around the concept of real profit sharing. It strikes me as odd that people might get uncomfortable when an acquaintance shares an idea or product that has had a positive impact on his/her life. Probably because, on the other hand, many of these same people have no strong objection to the massive amounts of advertising, corporate marketing, and the like that we are all exposed to on a daily basis.

What are big businesses and big corporations selling? If we stick with the concept that most businesses are selling an idea more than a product (even if it seems like they are selling a product), then what is Wal-Mart selling? What is McDonald’s selling? What is _______ selling? (Fill in the blank with any big business or corporation…this is not directed at any one in particular.)

Pretty much every business is selling an idea (sometimes disguised as a product) in exchange for money. So, in that sense, when we spend our money on something we are voting for what we want to see more of in the world. Are we making the CEOs and the people at the top rich? When we buy from almost any big business or big corporation (network marketing or otherwise), of course we are. But then the question becomes, what ideas are we buying? What types of thinking are we supporting? And it also begs the question, are we supporting leaders who truly have something to share and something to give back? Are we supporting people of real substance and character?

The Life business is new, but judging from what I’ve seen, this movement is growing and people are excited about it. From where I’m sitting, it looks like the founders have already given something valuable to their members: hope. And hope is something rare and precious and valuable in today’s world. So what Life is really selling is the possibility of positive change – and that’s something people can get excited about.

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One of my favorite television shows, Sex and the City, featured an episode where the characters discussed their secret single behaviors, such as eating saltines with jelly while reading fashion magazines, for example. While I’m not much for fashion magazines in general (or saltines, for that matter), in light of the last couple of posts discussing relationships, I do want to take some time to focus on the benefits of being single and on the value of solitude. This relates to a question posed in one of my earlier posts, “What legitimizes your life?”

Is a Friday evening spent perusing fashion magazines inherently less valuable than a Friday evening spent at a club with friends? Or in the arms of a lover or a spouse? For a lot of people, the presence of others is legitimizing. “How do I know I had fun on Friday night? Well, I have the stories of my friends to prove it. We were all there (wherever there is) and we all shared an experience.” Now, I’m not denying the value of shared experience, but there seems to be an overall misconception about the value of solitude. Solitude has gotten a bad rap: we’ve all heard the stories in the news where some unsavory character or another is described as a “loner.”

Being alone is scary for a lot of people. Some of this has to do with social attitudes toward being alone, which feed the fear that alone-ness means being unwanted or unloved, or indicates some fatal character flaw or, worse still, some level of mental illness. Achieving a basic level of comfort with alone-ness may well require examining or deactivating these fears. Just as there’s a strong mythology around the process of coupling, there’s an equally strong mythology around being alone.

When we’re alone, we only have ourselves for company. And when we are alone, we have a greater opportunity to see ourselves more clearly, particularly if we don’t engage in distractions like television or the internet. There’s always the chance we might not like what we see. Regardless, it’s an important opportunity to get comfortable with the different aspects of ourselves, to actually make friends with ourselves.

Self-study or self-knowledge, called svadhyaya, is an important aspect of any yoga practice. Svadhyaya is really about having a relationship with yourself. Understanding your likes and dislikes, also known as attachments or aversions (depending on the degree of emotional response involved). Asking important and sometimes difficult questions: “What do I not want to give up, and why? What do I avoid at all costs, and why? And, do my attachments and aversions serve me?” Part of svadhyaya is being curious and non-judgmental toward yourself, even going so far as to make peace with parts of yourself that you may not like.

Having a solid relationship with yourself is a foundation for building satisfying relationships with others (romantic or otherwise). Knowing what your own preferences are helps make it easier to communicate with others about what your needs are in a relationship, which is vital to establishing successful relationships. Being without a significant other is an opportunity: to discover who you are, what you prefer, and to be, in a word, selfish. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Relationships involve compromise; with a foundation of self-knowledge, it’s possible to know which compromises can be made generously and gracefully, and which others come at the cost of fulfillment, peace, or well-being.

So, rather than looking at those times without a relationship as periods of limbo, where we wait for our “real” life to start, we can begin a process of legitimizing them and valuing them. We may even choose to be alone for certain periods of our lives, recognizing the benefits that solitude can provide, especially for scholarly pursuits, creative endeavors, or periods of healing and emotional growth. If we approach alone-ness as a state that has value, we truly have the potential to make it an opportunity for growth and development. And, to make it an opportunity to do whatever it is we love to do: to create our own “party for one.”

Jessica Bennett’s article about polyamory, entitled “Only You. And You. And You” which appeared in Newsweek in 2009, is clear evidence that a growing number of people are dissatisfied with traditional coupling and seeking alternatives which allow them to write their own relationship stories. Polyamory is the practice of responsible non-monogamy involving multiple partners, literally “many loves.” Unlike swinging, which is a multi-partner lifestyle with an emphasis on recreational sex, polyamory is focused on the creation of long-term relationships grounded in emotional intimacy; it’s based on the idea that “there’s more than one way to live and love” and that there are “choices beyond the options society presents.”

As discussed in the previous post, motivations for creating structures outside of couple-dom may be practical in nature (fewer available and marriageable men) and personal in nature (acknowledging a need for both intimacy and autonomy that traditional marriage may not meet). Long-term relationships are, more often than not, about people wanting to get their needs met (which may include needs for companionship, community, stability, financial support, emotional support, and sexual satisfaction). As one polyamorist interviewed in Bennett’s article describes her lifestyle, “It’s about making sure that everybody’s needs are met, including your own…And that’s not always easy, but it’s part of the fun.”

Although we’re undoubtedly all familiar with the benefits, both anecdotal and research-oriented, of coupling, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention here some of the drawbacks and limitations of conventional coupling. As Bolick points out, one of the potential dangers is that “a married couple becomes too consumed with its tiny nation of two to pay much heed to anyone else.” She goes on to discuss the phenomenon of “greedy marriages” and how research has shown that often married couples do less to participate in the lives of their extended families and friends than their non-married counterparts do. Thus traditional marriage has the potential to be antithetical to community building in the larger sense. And of course, there’s the important question at the heart of Bennett’s article: “Can one person really satisfy every need?”

One of the biggest challenges to establishing a relationship structure outside of couple-dom is the scarcity of healthy, grounded, successful examples of people living alternative relationship structures. In other words, a lack of role models. While this can be extremely daunting, at the same time, it’s an opportunity. If we are willing to discard traditional rules that we have determined, through experience and reflection, don’t work well for us, we are free to begin to create our own models, our own templates. It’s both exciting and scary. It may involve trial and error, refinement, rethinking, and restructuring. All that said, I maintain that it’s worth the effort to engage in a process of discovering who we are and what structures allow us to grow more fully into ourselves. In short, what do we feel good about?

This is where process orientation becomes very important. This is a different mindset than traditional marriage-oriented dating, which operates something like this: “Until I get a ring, all dating is a waste of my time.” In this paradigm, marriage is the holy grail, and dating or relationship experiences that don’t end in marriage are failures or, at best, time-wasters. In process orientation, these experiences become opportunities for learning, for refining and redefining our needs, boundaries, intentions, and goals. And in essence, this is what spiritual practice is all about: an ongoing process of learning about ourselves and growing, in all areas of our lives.

More food for thought…

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, a utopian novel about a community of women written in 1915 (full text online).

The Oneida Community, discussed in this article from the New York Times travel section, practiced group marriage in New York in the mid-1800s.

I recently read Kate Bolick’s article “All the Single Ladies” from the November 2011 issue of The Atlantic, in which she discusses the present unique situation of single women in America and how much male-female relationships have changed over the last few decades. As a 30-something single woman, I find it fascinating to learn that there’s statistical backup for the things that I hear my single girlfriends say, usually along the lines of “there are just no good men out there.”

According to Bolick, there actually has been a significant drop in the number of available men. On top of that, many of the men who are available are now less educated and making less money than ever before. Mere decades ago, it was almost expected that a woman would marry a man who would take care of her, in a variety of ways. And now, based on my own personal observations, and those of Bolick, this is less likely than ever to happen.

I’m inclined to ask, “So what’s the problem?” I don’t mean to be obtuse. I know what the problem is: My girlfriends want to get married. And not just my girlfriends. Many, many women are out there looking for Mr. Right. But it strikes me that the problem is not so much the scarcity of Mr. Right, but rather a lack of imagination and initiative in creating other options. And it’s really not single women who are to blame for this. Virtually our entire social structure is based on “couple-dom.” Movies, music, and television shows about the trials and tribulations (and finally, the rewards) of finding The One abound. In other words, there is a vast mythology surrounding the process of coupling.

You might be asking yourself, what does any of this have to do with spiritual practice? I promise you it has everything to do with it! One of the tenets of spiritual practice is non-duality. This essentially is the opposite of an either/or mentality: rather a both/and approach to life. An integrated approach based on holism and acknowledging polarities, being not only willing and able to acknowledge conflicting needs within ourselves, but being comfortable doing so. In short, what’s needed is an ability to know what’s true for each of us, intrinsically, to acknowledge its ever-shifting nature, and simply to let it be, relating authentically to others in the moment.

In the article, Bolick touches on her own desire for both “autonomy and intimacy.” And why shouldn’t she have relationships that include both? Now that women have more education, more earning power, and more autonomy than ever before, why shouldn’t they – why shouldn’t we – use that power to create the relationships that meet our needs, to write our own relationship contracts, so to speak?

How can we do that? First of all, it’s important to establish a present moment, process-oriented mentality. In other words, the future is now. Life doesn’t start when Mr. Right shows up. He may never show up…and it really doesn’t matter. Why? Because you don’t need Mr. Right to start meeting your needs and to create the life of your dreams. Bolick herself observes, “If I stopped seeing my present life as provisional, perhaps I’d be a little…happier. Perhaps I could actually get down to the business of what it means to be a real single woman.” This astute observation gets to the heart of a very important matter, which centers around the question, “What legitimizes your life?”

The mindset that being single is illegitimate, that people who are unmarried or exist outside of couple-dom don’t have “real” lives and therefore are to be pitied, is simply outmoded and no longer useful. Marriage is no longer a given, as evidenced by the rising number of singles. Let’s begin the process of letting go of our fantasies of Mr. Right and Happily Ever After, and celebrate the fact that we no longer have to fear becoming old maids. Let’s begin writing our own stories: It’s time to start imagining and creating the lives we want…by exploring paradigms outside of couple-dom.

At the end of last year I almost died. It was in the news, but that’s not really the point. The short version of the story is that I took a trip in a friend’s small plane which ran out of fuel. We were fortunate to land successfully on the highway. It was, to be sure, a scary experience that would encourage anyone to re-evaluate his or her life goals and choices – or at the very least, make one leery of flying again anytime soon.

Those tense moments between realizing we were out of fuel and landing remarkably smoothly in the midst of traffic seemed to go on for a very long time. During them, I was surprised not by what did happen, but by what didn’t. I didn’t feel panicked or afraid of dying (though I thought we likely would all die). I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes. I didn’t think of all the things left unfinished, unsaid, or undone in my life. In short, I was ready. Don’t misunderstand me, I didn’t want to die. But I felt that my life was complete. I wasn’t thinking of all the things I had yet to experience, or all the changes I wanted to make.

Here’s what did happen: I remember breathing. I remember asking silently for help. I remember checking on the people I was with. I remember encouraging our pilot. I remember being surprised and grateful when we landed safely, as smoothly as we might have on a runway.

Later, my traveling companions commented on how calm I had been throughout the experience. It’s probably relevant for me to add here that I have not been, historically, a calm person. In fact, when I first began my own spiritual practice in 2003 it was to cope with anxiety and depression. After further reflection, I realized that my practice has benefited me in ways that were surprising, even to me.

In the last 8-9 years I’ve experienced my share of frustration, loss and disappointment. But fundamentally, it would seem that everything is in its right place, in divine order. While my life doesn’t look the way I thought it would, or the way I wanted it to, I’m living free from the tyranny of the past: free from intense regrets or incompletes that drain my energy. I have a history of authentic and varied relationships and life experiences. Most importantly, I’m living the choices that reflect my values. And these are the true benefits of a spiritual practice, examples of what it means to live a whole life.

I’m happy with who I have been, who I am now, and who I am becoming.

It was – and it is – well with my soul.

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In this segment I want to talk a little bit about getting back to two very basic elements of health and well-being that many of us don’t spend enough time addressing. The simple truth is that drinking plenty of water and taking time to relax will tremendously affect the way you look and feel.

Drinking plenty of water is one of the easiest ways to keep looking and feeling young. I know, I know, you’ve heard it all before, right? 64+ ounces of water a day. It’s funny that some of the simplest things that you can do for yourself are also some of the most beneficial. Drinking plenty of water is like making sure you keep enough oil in your car. If you consistently run your car low on oil, your engine develops problems because of it. It would be easy and inexpensive to take preventive action.

Sometimes neglecting the little things has a high price. Take lack of hydration for instance. Not only can a lack of hydration contribute to headaches, muscle cramps and general malaise, but it will also negatively affect your skin. Your cells can literally shrivel up due to lack of hydration, increasing the appearance of wrinkles and making you look older. Of course, drinking more water may take a little getting used to. (Let’s face it, in the practical sense it means more trips to the bathroom! But taking a little down time, wherever you can get it, does a body good.) In the end it becomes a question of priorities: Some of it is what we choose to do, but it’s also how we choose to do what we do.

Breathing. We do it all the time. (In fact, I bet you’re doing it right now.) But we rarely pay attention to it. How could something so simple as breathing have such a huge impact on our well-being? Think of it – a gasp of surprise, or the short, quick breath of excitement. While these are temporary reactions, they are just small examples of the way our bodies are connected to our mental processes.

Taking slow, deep breaths has a calming effect on your nervous system. When you take short, quick, or incomplete breaths, you engage the “fight or flight” part of your nervous system, valuable in helping you escape from dangerous situations – for example, being trapped in a burning building. The potential problem here is that, once you’re safely out of harm’s way, your body doesn’t always respond as if the threat is gone.

Think of it another way. Many of us lead stress-filled lives, moving from one challenging situation to the next. In that sense, for some of us, the fire never gets put out. That’s why taking a personal time-out at the beginning and/or end of each day can be such a powerful step toward reclaiming mental clarity and facilitating physical relaxation. It takes just a few short minutes, but the results are long lasting and far-reaching. (Here’s where those extra trips to the bathroom can also come in handy – I’ve heard many people say that sometimes they feel it’s the only place where they can be alone and have a little peace! And while we may joke about that, I know that on some level, for many of us who lead busy lives with demanding schedules, it’s absolutely true.)

When the fight/flight part of your nervous system is engaged, your body releases certain chemicals, such as adrenaline, and this puts additional strain on all of your body’s organs and systems. This is why it is so important to strengthen the parasympathetic nervous system, to give yourself time to rest and recharge, which will greatly contribute to both looking and feeling great.

Try this for as little as five minutes…

Take a deep breath; then exhale twice as long as you inhale. This calms the nervous system, engaging the “rest & digest” mechanism. Lie down in a comfortable position (try lying on your back, with a pillow under your knees). You could place a book on your abdomen. As you breathe, focus on moving the book up and down, breathing from deep within your belly.

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Now that I’m in my mid-30s, I notice many of my friends, co-workers, and acquaintances worrying about getting older. Or more specifically, worrying about what it means to get older. And about the fact that they are no longer part of the age category that is considered young and sexy (this goes for women especially). I think ultimately this preoccupation with aging comes from a fear of being old (often equated with being useless, unwanted or unloved). Or even the fear of dying – this in a culture which seems to virtually worship at the fountain of youth.

Much of the concern about getting older stems from people’s beliefs about aging. And in my line of work, I hear many people make statements about being in pain or having trouble moving around. And then they add, “Well that’s part of getting older, isn’t it?” And I’m not talking about people who are older. I’m talking about people my age, and younger. It surprises me that so many people I encounter fully believe that aging is a completely uncontrollable, external process, involving the increase of pain, the decrease of mobility, and the appearance of wrinkles and age spots.

While I’m not foolish enough to believe we can magically all remain forever young, part of the work that I do involves educating people about how much of the aging process is under their control. In other words, how old you feel, and even how old you look, has everything to do with how you take care of yourself, and very little to do with numbers. Now of course, I won’t deny that genetics play a role. We all know someone who smokes and lives to 100. Or someone who lays out in the sun all summer, yet still looks 20 years younger than his/her chronological age. But by and large, much of how you age is in your hands.

On of the ways that yoga and other similar practices can help you feel younger is by maintaining the health and flexibility of your spine. What’s really important is the health of the tissues between the vertebrae. Several key yogic warmups and postures such as spinal flexes (“cat-cow”) and spinal twists stimulate blood flow and circulation to these tissues and help keep your spine healthy. These exercises also stimulate the flow of your cerebral spinal fluid, thereby strengthening your nervous system.

Additionally, yoga can help you retain the range of motion in your joints. Exercises that regularly utilize your range of motion also help lubricate your joints by increasing the synovial fluid. Much the way that oil keeps your car’s engine running smoothly. If your joints are in good working order and you retain range of motion, as you get older you will move like a young person, regardless of your age. This will also mean that you will appear younger, as you will move more easily and fluidly than many other people in your age group.

A further key benefit from yoga is core strength and balance. Core muscles are deep abdominal muscles which run crosswise/horizontally (like a belt). They are located underneath your “six pack muscles” which run lengthwise or vertically. Core muscles help to stabilize you and protect your low back. Having a strong core can mean that you are less likely to strain or injure your low back. Also, strong core muscles, and “moving from your core” (rather than leading with your head in a head-forward or headfirst posture) means you will have a lower center of gravity and also a better sense of balance. This will allow you to more easily right yourself if you slip or trip.

Please look for additional discussion of this topic in my next post. In the meantime, if you want more food for thought, you may enjoy this inspiring article about a 91 year old yoga instructor who has been practicing for decades.

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William Broad’s article from the January 5, 2012, New York Times Magazine, entitled “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body” has been met with a variety of responses from the yoga community. What I’ve personally heard is many people criticizing Broad, or more specifically, Glenn Black, the yoga teacher interviewed in the article, for badmouthing yoga.

The problem is not with yoga itself but with the limited understanding and application of this program of study, particularly here in the West. There is a common misconception that yoga is “good for what ails you” and that almost anyone can improve his/her physical health by taking a yoga class at the local gym, 60-90 minutes of sweating through a variety of intense physical postures. But yoga itself is not really a physical exercise program at all.

Yoga is a philosophy or way of living often called the “8 fold path” because of its eight aspects, of which only one involves physical postures, or asana. The vast majority of yoga taught in this country is hyper-focused on this one aspect of what yoga truly is, with a few oms thrown in. Yoga includes other essential elements, such as self-awareness, self-discipline, concentration, breathwork, and meditation. Without these, yoga becomes just another form of physical exercise. In fact, the asana are not the focus of the practice at all, merely a preliminary technique for preparing the body for meditation.

Another cause of the confusion about yoga is that any generic discussion of the practice of yoga often doesn’t take into account that there are dozens of different styles of yoga, many of which bear little resemblance to each other while still sharing the same underlying philosophical basis. In other words, telling someone you “do yoga” is almost meaningless without any explanation of the specifics of what is involved.

At one point in the article, Black tells people who have had major trauma, “Don’t do yoga.” I would say, “If you’re going to practice yoga, you must practice it differently. With a different mindset and a different goal.” Again, the problem is not doing yoga, it’s the HOW and WHY of doing yoga. Change your focus and motivation in the practice, and you will experience the practice differently. This speaks to the point that Black makes regarding the presence of “ego” in yoga. Unfortunately, there is a prevailing attitude and mindset that a “better” or more advanced practice involves more physically challenging postures, when in fact this is not the case.

I’ve been practicing yoga since 2003, and teaching since 2006. During that time, I’ve attended a variety of workshops around the country taught by well-known instructors and had the opportunity to observe hundreds of students during the practice as well. Sadly, I do know where Black is coming from. I have witnessed a number of unsafe practices in classes and workshops, students encouraged to push themselves beyond was they could safely do. I’ve also been encouraged to attempt postures I was uncomfortable with because I knew I didn’t have the particular physical strength or key flexibilities to do them correctly. Sadly, I’ve also been criticized by other practitioners and teachers for choosing not to practice (and not to teach) certain physically risky postures that are common to various asana sequences in popular yoga.

Yoga really is good medicine. But like any other therapeutic treatment, it must be applied skillfully and under the guidance of a professional. You wouldn’t just walk into a pharmacy, take a bottle of pills off the shelf, and assume they must be the right ones to lower your blood pressure. Take the wrong medication, in the wrong dosage, and it likely will cause harm. At the very least, it will not produce the desired results. Yoga is no different. Practicing yoga with a “weekend warrior” mentality after working 80 hours during the week and living off fast food is a risky proposition.

Like any other exercise program, yoga has its risks. If you have knee problems, you wouldn’t start a intense physical training program without first checking with your doctor and the instructor to discuss how the program of study might impact your physical condition. Likewise, you must take the same approach with yoga, if you choose to practice it as a physical form of exercise, as the majority of people in this country do.